Financial credit and processing companies attempt to differentiate themselves by offering discounts to customers at particular merchants for using their credit card or payment systems, e.g., by offering a 1% rebate on monthly or yearly purchases over $5000. By employing this method, the financial company incentivizes end users to use their credit and/or payment services over competitors. This method of promotion also tends to increase the amount of credit held by the end user to the financial benefit of the financial company. However, such practices do not necessarily benefit particular merchants. Specifically, the merchant is forced to attempt to offer discounts directly to consumers, which is logistically difficult and costly to the merchant. In a better scenario, the merchant would benefit more by offering discounts only to customers that qualify for a discount based on what that customer is interested in and the location of that customer relative to the merchant. However, this process is generally difficult and costly for the merchant.
For example, a potential customer for the merchant can optionally travel to, or be shopping in, a particular city. The potential customer can optionally not know what potential products he or she is looking for. As a result, the potential customer can optionally prefer to walk or drive around the streets of the city in order to see if there is a merchant he might be interested in.
While merchants can optionally be offering mobile rebates to consumers directly on their mobile device, whereby the consumer would be pushed a virtual coupon to their mobile device and then the consumer would then present this coupon for a rebate to the merchant. This method of promotion has not worked well since using the virtual rebate is difficult for the consumer, the clerk, and the merchant. The consumer finds it difficult to locate the merchant or communicate the rebate to the clerk in the shop and the merchant Point of Sale (POS) systems are not equipped to handle such types of rebates in an easy fashion. Thus, there is a need to improve the ability of merchants to offer rebates or other incentives to lure customers into their retail stores, as well as provide offers to location based customers.